Tag: Loot

Got some tweaks for you Bumfuzzlers to chew on! We’ve got new features and we’ve resurrected some old ones! Knock messages, proximity scanners, single souce base upgrades, blueprint additions, tweaks to loot, turbo boost modifications and more! Read on and sink those chompers in!

Knock, Knock

Who’s there? Now the person knocking will know because you can set a message for them! This is a great option for players who want others to know whose base it is or if you just want to insult the people who might be raiding your base!

Once you hit Level 4 (/loyalty), walk up to one of your doors and type /knock to get more instructions.

Scary Crows (Modtopia)

The scarecrows are surely a cool idea and hearing that chainsaw was pretty scary, but I’ve put them out of their misery at least for now. For one, zombies couldn’t kill them, but became completely preoccupied anyway. Zambie hordes could be seen in large groups gathered around the scarecrows hacking away to no avail taking little notice of the Bumfuzzlers running by. Also I’m not fan of how fast they ran! I prefer players to be able to get away. Anyhow, if things change in the future and I have more control over them, maybe I’ll enable them again.

Turbo Charge (Modtopia)

The gather boost (/turbo) was probably a little high so I lowered it a touch. It’ll still give you an edge when collecting resources, but it just won’t be as over powered.

Here are the changes:

Boost now lasts 2 minutes for players from start to VIP (/loyalty)

Boost now lasts 5 minutes for players from VIP to Blood (/loyalty)

Cooldown changed to 2 hours for everyone

Animal kills still give you a temporary boost

Your Dead Body (Modtopia)

The corpse locator was supposed to tell you where your body was after you died, but instead of telling you where your body was, it would say you died some place unknown and that isn’t a big help if you’re trying to find your dead self. Now, when you respawn, you’ll be told the distance to your corpse and the direction it’s in.

Loot Changes (Modtopia)

I made a couple changes to loot in an attempt to balance things a bit. As you know, balancing is an ongoing task that seems to never end, but I’m confident we’ll get it right! Lately I’ve heard some ramblings about components and I’ve found food is way too common.

Here are some of the loot related changes:

Reduced shots required to shoot down air drop from 10 to 5 (Yes, you can shoot down airdrops!)

Raised component spawn counts to range between 1 and 10

Fuses, keycards, pitchfork and waterjugs now stack to 256

Slightly lowered scrap levels

I’ve found that hunting seems a little unnecessary because food and fuel spawns in such high counts. Due to that I made the following changes:

Lowered food box contents by 1 item

Slightly lowered food counts in stockings

Slightly lowered food counts in Christmas presents

Lowered low grade fuel in barrels and crates to max at 5

Lowered low grade fuel in airdrops to max at 25

Blueprint Additions (Modtopia)

I know the idea is to research items, but I kind of like the idea of finding blueprints out there in the wild. Something about finding them makes you feel like you just got lucky. With that, I’ve added nearly all of the Workbench Level 1 item blueprints out in the world so you can find them in barrels and crates.

Here’s a list of the items that you may find out in the wild:

Beancan Grenade

Bear Trap

Bed

Binoculars

Bucket Helmet

Ceiling Light

Chain Link Fence

Chain Link Fence Gate

Collared Shirt

Double Barrel Shotgun

Dropbox

Flame Turret

Flare

Floor Grill

Fridge

Garage Door

Glass Reinforced Bars

Hatchet

High External Wood Wall

High External Wood Wall Gate

Jacket

Long Sleeved T-shirt

Mace

Metal Embrasure a

Metal Embrasure b

Metal Window Bars

Miner Hat

Pants

Pickaxe

Pistol Ammo

Reactive Target

Revolver

Riot Helmet

Salvaged Cleaver

Salvaged Hammer

Salvaged Sword

Satchet Charge

Shotgun Trap

Silencer

Simple Sight

Snow Jacket

T-shirt

Tanktop Shirt

Weapon Flashlight

Waterpipe Shotgun

Proximity Scanner (Modtopia)

Unfortunately the proximity scanner hadn’t been working, but now I have it sorted out! This feature is really nice as it allows you to create a ‘lookout’ in whatever area you enable it. You’ll be alerted about any trespassers that come your way and you even get a lot for when you’re offline. This will help you identify the people who raided you even if they go undetected!

To setup the scanner, you have to bury certain items in a stash and once you do this, it will alert in chat you about people who walk within its radius and even create an intruder log you can access at any time! To get started, type /scan for information.

You will need resources to create a scanner though. Right now it’s set to require the following items:

Metal Spring: 5

Metal Fragments: 2,500

Sewing Kit: 5

Code Lock: 1

Sheet Metal: 5

Wood: 2,500

Thanks for helping me test it Three-Fingered Willie

Building Grades (Modtopia)

There’s been a few requests for the ability to upgrade an entire base with a command. In the past, I didn’t add it because there were exploits. I’m more confident now that those exploits are taken care of, so now, players from Level 13 (/loyalty) can upgrade an entire base with a single command. For all you honey-combers out there, you’ll enjoy this feature.

Simply look at part of your building and type /up. This will upgrade your base to the next highest level and will use the resources required for the upgrade.

Keep in mind, if you have even one building item upgraded to stone, it will try to upgrade to sheet metal and if one is sheet metal it will try to upgrade it to armor. That means, if you want to use this feature, consider building in one material type to start and then use it to move from level to level.

Known Issues (Modtopia)

As always there’s a couple of situations that are works in progress. Here’s a list of what I know about.

At Level 14 you’re supposed to have research reduced from 10 to 5 seconds and at Level 24 it’s supposed to be instantaneous. Neither seems to happen. It takes 10 seconds to research. I’ve disabled that plugin for now.

Trading items that give you special damage, gather, dodge or building abilities will result in the item being stripped of its powers. Be careful when accepting these items for trade as you won’t get what you’re seeking.

Keep sending that feedback Bumfuzzlers! I’m sorry this post doesn’t have mentions because a bunch of you gave me feedback for these changes. It just so happens I didn’t take good notes this past week for some reason. Thanks to everyone who contributed to these updates! Have fun out there!

Signal Cooldown (Modtopia)

Unfortunately it appears the supply signal cooldown was causing smoke grenades to convert into supply signals! We can’t have that 🙂 so I’ve disabled the cooldown for now. Santa will know how many of you took advantage of that one! 🙂 For now, enjoy spamming supply signals and smoke grenades to your heart’s content!

Thanks to Rumguzzler for reporting the issue and for Kreeperlink helping me duplicate it!

Stacking Items (Modtopia)

I noticed, when testing the smoke grenade and supply signal situation, that some items weren’t stacking properly. For instance, smoke grenades only stacked to 2 and the latest Halloween items didn’t stack at all. I went through the items and adjusted stacking numbers to what they should be.

Now stacks to 256

Smoke Grenades

SAM Rockets

New Burlap Gloves

Coffin Storage Boxes

Cauldron

Diving Fins

Diving Mask

Diving Tank

Diving Wetsuit

Fishingrod Handmade

Fogmachine

Geiger.counter

Gravestone

Halloween Lootbag

Hazmatsuit Scientist Peacekeeper

Knife Butcher

Large Candles

Leather Gloves

Roadsign Gloves

SAM Site

Scarecrow Head

Small Candles

Spiderweb

Spooky Speaker

Strobelight

Tactical Gloves

Wall Graveyard Fence

Watchtower

Weapon Mod 8x Scope

Wooden Cross

Now stacks to 100,000

Paper

Glue

Sticks

Blood

Salt

Bleach

Duct Tape

Battery

Skull Money (Modtopia)

Originally, you’d get some cash for crushing an opponent’s skull, but some people who will remain nameless lol! It wasn’t supposed to allow fellow clan members or friends to collect the blood money! Due to that, it’s now disabled until there’s a fix. Don’t worry though. Humiliation is still in place!

Sign Images (Modtopia)

There was an issue placing images using sign artist (/sil) on to XXL signs. That’s now been resolved so you should have no issues decorating your base with your favorite memes!

Thanks Doc and Rumguzzler for the feedback!

P.S. – There may be an issue where signs don’t keep their images after a restart. I’m trying to find time to research it further. Special thanks to Doc for helping me test this.

Airdrop Loot (Modtopia)

The airdrops were slightly OP with loot and if you consider that subscribers have been getting 5 airdrops every so often plus airdrops for voting airdrops, it needed a slight nerfing. I’ve left all of the good items in there, but simply added more items to dilute them. This means more randomization and hopefully a bit more fun in finding a good item. It shouldn’t be that difficult as there are still good items in there.

Also, I’ve lessened the subscriber airdrops from 5 to 3. This means you can get your hands on up to 5 airdrops every 48 hours between subscribing and voting. That’s still pretty darn good.

It may take a slight nerf again, but we’ll see. Obviously we all want the loot to be good, but just not over the top.

Thanks to Kreeperlink for your feedback!

Calling SuperHeli (Modtopia)

First of all, why would you call the SuperHeli? 🙂 Regardless of your reasons, when you hit level 17 (/loyalty) you can call the SuperHeli. However, as you level up, cooldowns are supposed to go down and the amount of times you can call the SuperHeli (/callheli) is supposed to go up. Unfortunately that wasn’t happening. Now it will.

Thanks to JoePerry for the heads up!

P.S. – Be careful if you call the SuperHeli either through /callheli or the store (/s). If there is a SuperHeli already up, it may cause the copter you called to be destroyed. There’s a limit imposed on the number of SuperHelis that can exist at one time for obvious reasons. Imagine there were 3 up at a time? Yeesh!

Teleportation (Modtopia)

Similar to the calling of the SuperHeli, there were some missed permissions on teleportation (/tp). Players at certain levels may have been getting the default teleport settings for cooldowns and countdowns when they should have been getting a reduction in time as their levels went up. This should now be resolved.

Thanks JoePerry for the heads up on this one!

Server Patch

There were a number of exploits with the hot air balloon and some other bugs so Facepunch was nice enough to release a server & client patch on Monday. Here’s a list of the various fixes as per Facepunch. It’s not extremely descriptive, but if you were following the various exploits and issues it might make more sense.

Fixed footIK mess when crouching

Fixed Hot Air Balloon exploit

Skin bundle update

Fixed lodding issues on rowboat

Fixed another Hot Air Balloon exploit

Fixed boats clipping in front of cargoship

Fixed triggerhurtnotchild warning

Btw, I saw today that Facepunch was doing some work on electricity. It’ll be interesting to see players have to first cut off a base’s electric before going in for the raid.

Clans

Lately, there’s been some talk about clans and their size and while clans are important to the game, I happen to agree some limits might be a good idea. Large clans can overpower a server, create an unsavory environment for solo/duo players and scare new players away from the server. Due to this, I’ve lowered the limit for clan members from the default of 8 to 3.

There’s a good chance I’ll raise the limit in the future, but for now let’s see how this goes. I feel clan member limits should be based on average population of the server. If there’s an average of 10 people on the server at any given time, clan size should be limited to duos or trios. If it’s 25, it can be upped to quads and if it’s 100, we can allow for 8.

Some of the other settings:

Alliance Limit: 1

Member Limit: 3

Moderator Limit: 1

Ally Friendly Fire Option: Off

Thanks to everyone for participating in the Discord discussion. I’m sure it’ll be an ongoing topic.

P.S. – I also configured clans to purge the inactive clans after 60 days of inactivity.

Selling Smokes (Modtopia)

Smoke rockets have two modes – locked-on = lots of damage, not locked on = not so much damage. When locked on they do about 20 times more damage and because of that, and the perk of locking on, I’ve gone ahead and lowered the quantity in the store to 1 and raised the cost to 2.

Also, it appears the blueprint for the smoke rocket will actually seem to work, but the crafting menu doesn’t show it there so you can’t actually craft it. Due to that, I’ve removed the blueprint from the store and credited back money to anyone who purchased it.

At the same time, keep in mind you can use /craft.lockon to create lock-on rockets. It’ll require 1 regular rocket and 1 tech part which seems fair.

Thanks to Kreeperlink and Doc for the feedback!

Loot & Resources (Modtopia)

Modtopia used to be set to a 1 week wipe cycle, so in some situations, the loot is still reflecting a shorter life cycle. Both loot and resources are probably a little higher than they need to be for a 1 month wipe cycle and it’ll take a little bit of time to get it right.

The more feedback I get from you Bumfuzzlers the faster it’ll go. Maybe by next wipe, the server will be tweaked just in time for the North Pole to come to Modtopia. Yes, Santa is coming soon so you better be good for goodness sake! 🙂

Thanks to all the Bumfuzzlers who provided feedback. It’s so critical to ensuring the server is configured properly and the various aspects of the configuration work properly. Let me know what you think about the changes. Nothing is set in stone! Please keep it up and have fun!

Always with the tweaks Bumfuzzlers! I’ve got a couple of adjustments that should gives you all some nifty new abilities, but also balance raiding and building a little bit while providing some fun towards the end of the wipe cycle! Read on!

Loot Scanning (Modtopia)

About a week or two ago I added the ability to scan the contents of supply drops, crates and barrels, but there was something missing – the CH47 locked crate.

Now you’ll have that ability, but due to that, I decided to switch around some level permissions. Here’s what we have now:

Level 8: Can scan the contents of a Supply Drop with Binoculars

Level 19: Can scan the contents of a CH47 locked crate

Level 27: Can scan the contents of crates and barrels

Seeing inside the CH47 crate can save tons of time! Great perk for level 19’ers!

Elevator Raiding (Modtopia)

Raiding bases equipped with an elevator (/newlift) poses certain challenges that are absent in other situations. This is because elevators are practically indestructible and that’s certainly important to understand for base designers and raiders alike.

To make it a little more fair for raiders, I’ve changed things around so destruction of an elevator’s foundation or floor underneath, means destruction of the elevator itself. This makes it fair for both sides of the equation.

Thanks [F11]Kreeperlink for the feedback

Foundation Health (Modtopia)

It seems based on discussion and polling that people share the opinion that foundation wiping mostly allows raiders to escape having to account for the builder’s design of the base. Instead of dealing with turrets, shotgun traps, confusing doors and the like, all you have to do is save up your rockets and blast your way through the underbelly to create instability in the structure. This defeats the purpose of the builder’s trouble and it’s a questionable tactic.

I don’t want to discourage raiding, but I do want players to be subject to the effort and ingenuity of the builder. What’s the point of people going through the trouble to making a base that’s hard to raid if people just plow through the foundation with rockets? It doesn’t seem balanced.

Let’s see how this works and if it doesn’t, it can be changed back. I’m looking to you Bumfuzzlers to provide me with some good feedback!

End of Wipe Boost (Modtopia)

For a long time I’ve seen player counts drop the last days of raid cycles. This is mostly because players who get raided the 3rd week of the cycle feel they don’t have time to get supplies to build or those who would raid might not have people to raid. Obviously we’d rather go out with a blast! I’m thinking this next wipe cycle we’ll try something different.

On the Tuesday night before the Thursday wipe (in this next wipe’s case, December 6th), I’ll make available 2 kits with cool downs for every 12 hours – one for the raider and one for the builder. You can obviously take both kits, but it’s doubtful with such little time, you’ll be able play both roles.

The kits might look something like this:

Raid to Wipe kit:

50 rockets

50 satchels

25 timed explosives

1 rocket launcher

5 supply drops

Build to Wipe kit:

60k wood

50k stone

40k metal frags

30k high quality metal

8 turrets

16 shotgun traps

25 bear traps

25 land mines

2k handmade shells

2k 556 ammo

5 supply drops

I’ll adjust the menu screen and put some recurring text to let people know it’s coming so they don’t miss the chance. I hope this adds an elevated element to the game for a couple days and I’m eager to see what players do with the resources.

Base Notables (Modtopia)

I flew around a bit over the past week or two and saw a couple of bases (sorry if I missed yours – please point yours out to me next time) that were worthy of mention. Here’s a couple of shots from the outside of those bases with a couple comments!

c0de created this very scenic base well placed on top of a mountainous area near the ocean. I never went back to see if it lasted, but it was really nice location choice!

[F11]Sin and probably a couple others created this silo type base. I enjoyed reading the memes 🙂

Before you get past the blinding lights you can nailed by all the turrets within the jail cell walls. I liked the idea! Nice work Graceful Mess! I did not put that bear there. It just so happened to be hanging out 🙂

Another one by Graceful Mess caught my eye. This one looks so Mad Max! 🙂 The car inside the walls among the pumpkins was a nice touch 🙂

Pumpy Boi gets an honorable mention with this high security lock down base!

The first thing I noticed was the careful placement of door skins in Questionable Punch‘s base. It looks tight 🙂

R3mix just wants to be left in peace. His base is his home away from home. I like the design and last I checked it’s one of the last bases still intact!

Not sure what Rumguzzler was going for here, but it reminds me of the Redeemer Statue in Rio!

This was one of my favorites, but I’m sorry to say I didn’t get a good picture of it. Rumguzzler’s boat house was perfectly decorated inside and had a really nice parking space for a boat with a dock to go along with it.

Some great stuff from everyone. Sorry if I left anyone out, but you can tell me about your base next wipe and I’ll post it!

There we have it folks. Tomorrow the wipe comes and with it a new beginning for everyone. Which Bumfuzzlers are going to step it up this wipe? Can any base survive the entire cycle? Is someone going to be made to eat Bumfuzzler? Any revenge coming to someone in particular? 🙂 We’ll see! Note that the wipe will happen as soon as Facepunch releases their patch. This is typically between 1 and 7pm EST.

Haunted House (Modtopia)

Inside are items, you’ll surely want, but you can’t just get in. The Haunted House is protected by a very powerful spell that makes it completely invulnerable to any mortal damage! So put away your rockets and C4! You’ll need to gain access some other way!

When the clock strikes midnight, the spirits unlock the doors to let you in so you can get your hands on the treasure inside, but you only have a short time! Don’t stay long because at 1AM, the doors lock you inside, never to escape from the after world!

There’s an assortment of goodies inside including resources and lots of skin perks to give you that extra ghoulish advantage!

The items inside will respawn every night so making your way back there wouldn’t be a bad idea, but unfortunately, you’ll have to brave the dark!

Halloween Skins (Modtopia)

Tis’ the season to sprinkle some Halloween skins into the mix of loot out there. Be on the lookout for some fun skins to brighten you and your Halloween bases! 🙂

Skin Perks (Modtopia)

I’ve added a couple new skin perks inspired by Halloween.

We’ve got the Hallows Mask, Vest and Kilt at 7% dodge each! And it’s a cool looking outfit! The mask glows in the dark!

…and the 2x damage Scarecrow AK47 with the 2x Unholy Blade gives you all you’ll need to slice those ghosts in half! You can expect these items to popup in loot here and there, but mind you, they’re rare!

SuperHeli Loot (Modtopia)

I reviewed the loot received when someone takes down the SuperHeli and I found it to be less than wonderful. So I’ve increased it!

Keep in mind though, I slightly increased the SuperHeli’s health and gave him a couple more rockets! Far more goodies should mean a little more challenge!

Bradley Loot (Modtopia)

The loot seemed a little weak for the Bradley as well so I figured I’d increase that too. Due to the tank being something a solo player can handle on their own, instead of the SuperHeli’s 5 crates, I’ve left it at 3. However, it will give you the same quality loot.

Admin Base Challenge (Modtopia)

I saw a couple attempts at the admin base and I can see where I need to make some updates to it! No one has gotten anywhere near all of the loot, but there was some great progress. Sometime soon I’ll tear it down, update it with corrections and refurbish 🙂

Please enjoy and send me feedback if you have it! I’m always interested in hearing what you Bumfuzzlers have to say and it’s extremely valuable.

As always Bumfuzzlers, I have some updates to let you know about! We’ve got some new abilities like individual weapon stats, binocular loot scanning, horse riding improvements, better car stability, you can upgrade work benches sooner and other changes! Read on!

Weapon Stats

If you can kill something with it, you can now see stats for it by looking at the details of the item. Simply open your inventory and click on the item. If there are stats, it’ll show and if there are no stats it’ll look as it always has.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t store lifetime stats as it’s only per item, but it should be pretty cool to know which weapon is lucky for ya. This means, if you have an AK, make kills with it and then get another AK, it won’t show the stats anymore. This is meant to show you the amount of kills you have for that specific item.

I’ve added this to both Modtopia and Vanillatopia.

Economics on Join (Modtopia)

It used to be that players new to the server started with a gift of $250. Well, sorry new joiners, but I’ve changed this to $0. I found too many people would start up and get certain items too quickly and I think it makes things a little too easy.

It doesn’t take long to get cash either via Discord or several minutes of game play anyway.

Thanks to TheFireChef for pointing this out.

Loot Scanner (Modtopia)

Every wish you could know the contents of a box before bothering with it? Well, now, you can use your binoculars to scout out the contents of various containers!

All you have to do is simply zoom in over a supply drop, box or barrel and press USE!

This ability isn’t just for anyone. You’ll have to level up your Loyalty (/loyalty) to get these perks.

Also, note that as a result of the binoculars becoming a bit more useful, I’ve slightly increased the rarity of both the item and the blueprint.

Upgrade Workbench (Modtopia)

A few weeks ago I added the ability to upgrade workbenches. This is a real space-saver since it means not having to create Level 1, 2 and 3 workbenches in your base. The ability to upgrade workbenches means all you’d have to do is look at a workbench, type /upgradewb and it replaces the workbench with the next level bench.

The thing is, I made it so that this was only available to players at Level 28 and up which means you’d have to play quite a while to get access to something that most likely is more valuable to lower levels starting out in smallish bases.

I’ve bumped this perk up in levels so that now it’s available for players who are Level 8 and above. Enjoy!

Thanks to puppyslasher for the feedback.

Go Cowboy

I’ve always loved the ability to ride horses, but they’ve needed some tweaking for a while. In testing, I found it was way too hard to tame a horse since you had to be really close and at the same time, they were super fast, didn’t turn well and third person was an issue.

For those of you new to horse riding all you have to do when you see a horse is type /stophorse within distance of it. The horse will stop. Then press USE on it to mount. Spacebar will jump off the horse.

I’ve made the following changes:

Sprint speed was dropped from 50 to 40. Less choppy ride, still easily traverse map and outrun zambies.

Turn speed was increased from 3 to 5.

Horse no longer can die while riding

Third person is now disabled

Taming the horse is now required (/stophorse)

Taming distance was increased from 10 meters to 25 meters

Giddyup Cowboy Bumfuzzlers! 🙂

Car Adjustments

I did a bunch of tinkering with the car as it’s been quite a jalopy of a machine for quite some time.

For those who don’t know, the car is really handy. Not only is it fast and fun, but it gives you the equivalent of a second backpack so going out on the town to gather items can be quite lucrative. Also, you can put a code lock on the trunk and hotwire other people’s cars if they locked it!

Here’s what was changed:

Originally spawned with 10-50 liters of fuel. Now you’ll get 25-75 liters.

You can now flip a turned over car by using /flipcar

Decay is reduced from 5 to 1

Lowered the maximum speed from 75 to 65 MPH

Cut fuel consumption rate in half from 0.5 (liters per second) to 0.25

Suspension dampening increased from 2,000 to 3,500

Overall, I think you’ll find the car much more enjoyable. It will use less fuel, has a more controllable top speed and has a much more stable suspension.

Meteor Radius

I’ve made a slight tweak to the Meteor Showers in that now they have a radius of 125 meters instead of 100 meters since I found they were a little too concentrated. Also the top end of the drops was slightly decreased.

As always Bumfuzzlers, please keep the feedback flowing. I truly appreciate it as it keeps things in a constant state of improvement!

Hey Bumfuzzlers! I’ve got some server tweaks for you for both Modtopia and Vanillatopia. I’ve listened to feedback from a lot of you and peppered that with some things I noticed to hopefully make the servers work a little better. Check it out!

Custom Map (Vanillatopia)

I’ve loaded a custom 3k map called Mazzini Islands over at Vanillatopia and it’s pretty interesting. It really gives Rust a totally different feel and makes Rust feel newer since you don’t really know what to expect. There are lots of islands and things seem spread out a bit more. If you’re up for some good old fashioned vanilla Rust, go try it out.

I’m toying with the idea of putting it up on Modtopia in November. Let me know what you think.

Thanks for suggesting the map WRecKLeSS!

Animal Density (Vanillatopia)

I’ve gone ahead and raised the animal density on Vanillatopia to be the same as Modtopia. Now there’s 33% more bears, chickens, etc. It seemed they were a little scarce out there and without animals, surely Rust peoples will die 🙁

In-Game Store (Modtopia)

There were a couple of items that seemed out of alignment so I touched them up. It’s important that the Pasta Salad is priced appropriately!

Creedence 2x damage crossbow changed from 4 to 6 RP

Armored Door changed from a quantity of 3 to 1

Armored Double Door changed from a quantity of 3 to 1

Ladder Hatch changed from a quantity of 3 to 1

Thanks Doge for the feedback.

Zambie Hordes (Modtopia)

I lowered the zambie count a few weeks back, but now it seems like there just ain’t enough of those undeaders. I increased the amount of hordes from 12 to 15. That should add a little more excitement. Hope they scare you 🙂

Loot (Modtopia)

I’ll be tweaking the loot every so often. My goal is to find a good balance between vanilla and modded so that you have to grind a little, but it’s not overwhelmingly boring and repetitive.

Code Locked Crate bumped number of items from 6 to 8, blueprints from 1 to 2

Meteor Showers (Modtopia)

Anyways, the amount of space resources were pretty crazy high so I had to cap it a little to make it a little more reasonable. We’ll see how it goes to know if I’ll need to cap it again.

There are three types of Meteor Showers that happen randomly – mild, optimal and extreme. Here are the changes I’ve made to each of them:

Mild

Drops stone, metal ore

Changed ranges of drops

stone 300-3000

metal ore 100-1000

Changed meteor count from 60 to 175

Changed storm radius from 200 to 100

Storm duration stays at 240

Optimal

Drops stones, metal ore, high quality metal ore

Changed ranges of drops

stone 400-4000

metal ore 200-2000

high quality metal ore 50-500

Changed meteor count from 45 to 100

Changed storm radius from 300 to 100

Changed storm duration from 150 to 100

Extreme

Drops stones, metal ore, high quality metal ore and sulfur ore

Changed ranges for drops

stone 500-5000

metal ore 300-3000

high quality metal ore: 100-1000

sulfur ore: 100-1000

Changed meteor count from 125 to 50

Storm radius stays at 100

Storm duration stays at 30

I’m working on letting players know about the location of the showers so it’s easier to find then.

Kits (Modtopia)

A while back, I changed the Subscriber Kit, a kit given to players who subscribe to the website, to give supply signals instead of C4, Rockets and giant goodies like that. For some reason I noticed that didn’t take effect. Doh!

Now the subscriber kit will give players 5 supply signals. Since you can use the kit 3 times per wipe, that’s – you did the math already didn’t you? – 15 supply signals! That is quite a lot of goodies. I recommend subscribing.

Environmental Saves (Modtopia)

No it has nothing to do with that Al Gore stuff. A few weeks ago we had an issue with server lag. We’ve since figured it out, but during that process I had set the server to save the environment less frequently thinking it could be related.

Now that the lag issue is resolved, I’m adjusting the saves to occur more frequently. This is important in the event that the server does crash for any reason, your progress should not be lost.

Saves should happen now every 5 minutes as opposed to every 10 and you should even see a chat message stating it’s happening.

Server Restarts (Modtopia)

Server restarts were set to 12PM and 12AM EST, but I’ve found they might not be the best times. I’ve changed this to 4AM and 4PM Eastern Time to hopefully avoid interrupting anyone. Let me know if you find the server restart interrupts your playtime!

As always Bumfuzzlers, please send me your feedback. It helps to continually improve the server. Have fun out there! Let me know if you think I should run a custom map next month.

What’s up Bumfuzzlers?! The last couple weeks I’ve been trying to find some time to get back to tweaking! After changing to a 1 month wipe and resetting the loot tables, there’s a lot I still had to do. Thing is, my schedule has been rather hectic so it’s been delaying me. Rest assured I am getting your feedback! Here’s just a few tweaks I’ve made over the weekend.

Loot (Modtopia)

I’ve done a bunch, focusing on barrels and availability of certain items. There’s no doubt I have a lot to go, but I’m going to let these changes settle in, get feedback and then continue. I’m trying to adjust things cautiously and carefully because, with the longer wipe cycle, I’m trying to create a little grind, but not grind-age.

Adjusted the rarity of key cards. Both green and blue are now common, but red is uncommon and slightly harder to find.

Fuses were adjusted from rare to uncommon. Right now there’s 16 in the world. They will vary slightly from that count.

Mining Quarries can now be found in loot as rare

Survey Charges will now be found in loot as rare

Also the following items were added to the loot table that were previously unavailable:

Hammer (Common)

Pickle (Common)

Bone Arrow (Uncommon)

Small Battery (Uncommon)

Blood (Uncommon)

Angry JackoLantern (Uncommon)

Happy JackoLandern (Uncommon)

Paper (Uncommon)

Pookie Bear (Uncommon)

Research Paper (Uncommon)

Santa Hat (Uncommon)

Scarecrow (Uncommon)

Skull Fire Pit (Uncommon)

Snowball (Uncommon)

Snowman (Uncommon)

Large Stocking (Uncommon)

Small Stocking (Uncommon)

Salt (Uncommon)

Christmas Baubels (Uncommon)

Christmas Candycanes (Uncommon)

Christmas Gingerbread Men (Uncommon)

Christmas Lights (Uncommon)

Christmas Pinecone (Uncommon)

Christmas Star (Uncommon)

Christmas Tinsel (Uncommon)

Christmas Garland (Uncommon)

Christmas Lightstring (Uncommon)

Christmas Large Present (Uncommon)

Christmas Medium Present (Uncommon)

Christmas Small Present (Uncommon)

Christmas Tree (Uncommon)

Christmas Garland (Uncommon)

Christmas Door Wreath (Uncommon)

Water Purifier (Rare)

Frog Boots (Rare)

Door Closer (Rare)

SPAS12 Shotgun (Very Rare)

Scrap can now be found in piles from 0 – 60

Remember, if you put up a Christmas tree in your house and decorate it, you’ll get presents from Santa! 🙂

Thanks to Twisted Rhythm for the feedback.

Hordes (Modtopia)

I’ve made a couple changes to Zambies to make them a little more interesting in terms of loot, but also to help avoid the constant cat and mouse chase that goes on when you hear them grunting.

I’ve increased the horde count by 2 for a total of 12 hordes

I’ve modified the number of zambies in each horde to start at 1 instead of 4. This should mean you’ll encounter smaller groups.

I’ve left the max zambie count in the hordes to 15 so they will still grow over time.

Zambies now drop additional items that can be used for quests (/q)

Small Battery

Blood

Paper

Pookie Bear

Research Paper

Glue

Sticks

Duct Tape

Camera

Bleach

Keep in mind the quests (/q) for these items, when completed, will give you Skin Perk items. For instance, increased dodge, harvest, damage and building abilities!

Thanks to Twisted Rhythm for the feedback.

Blueprints (Modtopia)

I’ve added more blueprints to barrels to make it easier to get crafting. I still have to add a few more and review boxes and crates.

Concrete Barricade

Wood Barricade

Sandbags

Large Furnace

Candle Hat

Hoodie

Machete

Pants

Salvaged Sword

Shelves

Metal Shutter A

Metal Shutter B

Wood Shutter

Sign Post

Small Sign

wall.frame.cell

wall.frame.cell.gate

wall.window.bars.metal

wall.window.glass.reinforced

Again, these are all fairly low level blueprints. I’ll choose from the uncommon items soon and add a few higher levels to the barrels when I have time.

Thanks to Twisted Rhythm for the feedback.

Grilling (Modtopia)

There was a weird bug with the grill where phantom versions of meat and wood would pop out of the grill when the cooking was done. I tracked this down to a plugin that seems to have screwed the pooch and now you the BBQ ghosts are gone!

Thanks to Twisted Rhythm for reporting the issue.

Jason Voorhees (Modtopia)

Our long-time resident horror movie terror was MIA. For some reason he stopped roaming the countryside! He’s now back and ready to machete so be careful. He packs some hefty health and is very stealthy.

Thanks to [CyanN] Lichh for your feedback.

Prestige (Modtopia)

For some reason it seemed notifications were being doubled which can be somewhat annoying. I think I’ve resolved that now. Thanks Hazmad for the feedback.

Also, in an early version of Prestige it was set to play an explosion when earning a new level. That’s been disabled, but I must have rolled back the version on that so it became enabled again. I’ve disabled it again so you don’t think you walked over a landmine! Thanks Twisted Rhythm for the feedback.

Kits (Modtopia)

Changing to a 1 month wipe means having to adjust a lot of other things – like kits. They were still setup as if we had a 1 week wipe cycle. Here are the changes I’ve made:

Death (Modtopia)

There are two plugins that help you find your body when you die. Both of them were having issues. For instance, you might have been seeing a message like this when you die: “Your corpse was last seen 1378 meters from here, in the unknown”

Obviously this isn’t very helpful. Now it will identify your body’s grid number to make it easier. The other plugin is meant to highlight your body on the G map, but it’s not working. I’ll work on that. For now I’ve just disabled it.

Restarts (Modtopia)

Recently the server has crashed twice unexpectedly. I’m looking into locating the cause. In the meantime I’ve set the server to restart 2 times per day. No worries, you’ll get 30 minutes warning with a nice countdown and the server will be back up usually within 5 minutes.

Expect the server to restart at 12pm and 12am EST. Hopefully this doesn’t cause the map and other graphical items not to work, but if it does please Steam me so I know and then I’ll fix it. That’s part of the reason I haven’t had automated starts.

Meanwhile I’ve set the map to save every 5 minutes instead of 10 so that if it does crash, the rollback won’t be quite as severe.

Thanks to Annyu and Lichh for the feedback.

Plugins (Modtopia)

With the two server crashes I decided to disable some plugins that I don’t think are used much in an effort to see if the issue is related to any of them. A couple of them simply aren’t even working anyway so I figure I can disable them now to see if they’re issues.

I disabled the following (and a few more you wouldn’t know about):

Barrel Points

Blood Trail

Cupboard Messages

Death Marker

Decay Notifications

Easy Vote Highest Voter

Flare Gun

Proximity Scanners

Rafts

Target Practice

Survey Info

Viking Boat

Visual Cupboard

If you are heartbroken that any of these are disabled, please let me know and I’ll make it an effort to enable it again.

Performance (Modtopia)

I just received an answer from my server provider and they said the server had hit the memory limit which is why it crashed. They’ve extended that limit so I’m hoping things will get better. Please let me know if the server crashes in case I miss it.

Population

Although the server provider increased the memory which is likely running down due to the various memory leaks Rust has, I do hear players talking about higher than normal client crashes so I decided to tinker with the population limits which I set relatively higher a while back. It could very well be that the extra entities in the world are causing clients to hold on to more things in memory and then…kablooey.

So I reset the limits back to defaults. This means some items might be harder to find. For instance, bears were at a max of 27 and now they’re 18. Ore and trees also had higher limits. Additionally, the tickrate (the rate at which items respawned – not necessarily in the same place) was 60, but now I raised it to 90 (the default is 120)

Let’s see how it goes.

Thanks everyone for your patience while I reconfigure things. With your feedback, I’m confident the server will be better than it was before the loot table was reset. Again, the hope is to give the server back a bit of that survival feeling while still maintaining that modded server feel. Stick with me and we’ll get it to that point for what I hope is a great balance.

Keep the feedback flowing Bumfuzzlers! I’m paying close attention and listening! Have fun out there!

Hey Bumfuzzlers, I have some changes to report on! We’ve just wiped Modtopia today and I’ve got some massive changes to zambies, kits, loot, crafting, smelting and the wipe cycle! Dig in!

Map Size (Modtopia)

For the last couple map wipes I’ve been going with a size 2700 map and this week is no different. I figured I’d give it a shot for a while and see if there’s any interesting increased action. Next wipe on September 6th will be a large map. I’m thinking 3000 or 3500. This is due to the wipe cycle changing.

Zambies (Modtopia)

Due to the map size reduction, I’ve lowered the amount of zambies to 10 hordes of 15 zambies max. This should ensure players don’t spawn into a group of the undead and that it’s manageable if you get caught off guard. As the map size increases again I’ll be increasing the zambies also, but it will be proportional.

Backpack Issue (Modtopia)

It turns out medium backpacks weren’t working for Level 21, 22, 23 and 24. Not sure what caused it, but fiddling with permissions fixed it. Now we’re all good and you early 20 levels can carry more stuff as planned!

Thanks to Slim Jim for reporting the issue!

Loot Tables (Modtopia)

I’ve been wanting to drastically change the server for a while. It seems like there’s no difficulty in gaining access to items and that’s probably due to the fact that there’s a 5 times multiplier on all loot. Well, I’ve gone and reset the loot back to the original settings with the expectation that I would increase them back up a little over time. Scrap is slightly more increased, but I still have to work on that a bit. Due to this reduction I’ll be changing the wipe cycle at the next wipe.

Kit Changes (Modtopia)

I’ve removed some of the default kits like Build, Weapons and Medical. This is in line with what I mentioned above regarding the reduction of items in the world. The other kits still exist so Trump kits and challenges will still pack a punch to your inventory.

Smelting (Modtopia)

Along with the loot and kit changes, I’ve increased the time it takes to smelt resources. The multiplier was set to 2.5, but I’ve lowered it to 1.5. Sure as the other items are subject to change so is this, but I felt that players were quickly getting access to crafted items far too quickly.

Crafting (Modtopia)

Yes. You may hate me for a few moments (don’t make me cry!), but I’ve slightly increased the time it takes to craft items. Seriously it doesn’t feel like it’s that much increased.

Now it will take 25% of the default crafting speed. It shouldn’t be harsh, but it won’t insta-craft. Again, I don’t want people have 50 c4 and 200 rockets on the second day of the wipe. It’s just too outrageous. It also makes things a bit less valuable.

Wipe Cycle (Modtopia)

Along with these changes, as soon as we wipe on September 6th, we’ll switch over to a 1 month wipe cycle. This will make the reduced item count a little easier to swallow as players will now have more time to build and such. Mind you, by next week, I hope to increase items a little bit and hopefully I get feedback from players so I know if it’s tolerable or they are freaking out.

While I make these changes, please bear with me and provide me with feedback. If you hate it, let me know. If you love me let it show. I want to try to make the server a little more serious than just an experimental sandbox server and give players a reason to struggle just a little bit more than they do now.

Tweakin’ a few items on the Modtopia server based on some recent Bumfuzzler feedback. I’ve buffed the supply drops and added a few related changes, modified some annoying filters, redesigned items in the website store and more! Read on!

Supply Drops

From some players I’ve heard the supply drops are great and from others I’ve heard they stink. I guess it depends on the situation. It’s important to recognize I designed them to vary greatly, Regardless, I figure I’ll improve them a bit, but also limit them in other ways. In essence, I’d like to make supply drops more special, but obviously not nearly as special as the SuperHeli or Bradley loot. You can expect more adjustments to come over the next couple weeks.

Supply drop loot is improved

removed several less valuable items from the mix

gave ranges to items (ex: When C4 spawns you will get between 1 & 3 of them, rockets between 1 & 10, etc.)

Chat Filter

There were a few default word censors that I’ve removed from the list like LMAO. Not sure why they were on there. The basics are still enforced as would be expected.

It’s unfortunate word replacement broke a few updates back so it no longer replaces censored words with the word Bumfuzzler. Hope to fix that at some point.

Website Store

I’ve removed a bunch of the items from the store as I’ve received a few comments from players who feel the server comes across as pay to win. I can see that, so I decided to can them. I’ll be reviewing things for a little bit to decide what I can sell in the store that will provide players with value and help with the financial side of running the server without jeopardizing the integrity of the game play and unintentionally giving players an unfair advantage via their wallets.

Hold on Bumfuzzlers! We’ve got a new wipe cycle and a bunch of changes that I hope will change the way Modtopia game play works in a good way. We’ve got store expansions, resource gather changes, kit changes and more! Check it out.

Resources

For a while now, I’ve known I needed to take a look at the resource rates and kits. When people are finishing the wipe cycle with 100’s of rockets and C4, it says to me the gather rates are out of control. I’ve also seen full bases go armor on the second day of the wipe which should not be happening unless you’re playing 48 hours straight! So, now that some of my schedule has been freed up, I’m going to get back to basics and dial things down just a little.

Quarries have been boosted to 10x during the day, 12.5x during the night

My hope is to make Quarries more valuable and reduce the high level resource multipliers for individuals. The drop from 2 to 1.25 should result in a 37.5% cut in resource gathering which shouldn’t be massive, but it will surely be a reduction that I hope will make building more meaningful and raiding a little more frequent.

Kits

Some of the kits were just way too generous and they went against what I was trying to accomplish. For instance, starter kits were giving people enough to not only get a starter base up, but build a retirement home. That simply can’t stand. It’s critical that players have to do ‘some’ work to get resources and build their homes.

Here’s what I changed:

Startup Build kit

Wood: 10k lowered to 5k wood

Stones: 10k lowered to 2.5k

Changed usage to 1 times per wipe

Aid kit

Changed from 6 hour cooldown to 24 hours

Removed meats, left medical supplies

Weapon kit

Removed ammo

Removed Waterpipe Shotgun

Removed Custom SMG

Tools kit removed (tools are given when you spawn)

Weekly kit removed (it wasn’t very valuable anyway)

Trump wall kit

Stone: 25k lowered to 7.5k

Stone Walls: 25 lowered to 7 walls

Bradley Loot

With the lowering of gathering, I raised up the loot for the Bradley. The loot it gives, should you live to see it, should be Bumfuzzler good!

Rockets, ammo, weapons, C4 and a bunch of scrap!

In-Game Store

This will need balancing over time, but so far I’ve gotten the things in there at reasonable starting points. Some things might be too expensive or vice versa, but that will need some feeling out and some feedback from you all.

What’s really great about the store is that you can buy blue prints and also Reward Perks so that item that’s eluding you like the Large Furnace blueprint or the Bolty with 2 times the damage can now be yours for a price! Thanks to soundklown for requesting blueprints!

So you’ve noticed that you’ve been gaining money as you play. This is what you’ll use to buy items in the store. Once you have money, simply type /s in game to open the store. Once open, you’re going to need what’s called Reward Points or RP. You can convert your money into RP by clicking on exchange. Right now it takes $50 to gain 1 RP. Items in the store range from 1 RP to 6 RP. The reason for the conversion requirement is simply that money can be will be used for other things in the future. For instance now, you can use money for /skin shop which allows you to buy default skins for your items.

Remember, you automatically get money every certain amount of minutes played, but you also get them for breaking barrels. Furthermore, don’t forget you can steal it from other players, get money for damage dealt to other players and of course killing them.

Here are some of the items in the store:

You can even buy the swim wear there which are hard to find items!

Plane Crash

It used to be that the plane would crash into the highest mountains in the map so I raised it up 10 meters. Now it appears that’s not enough so I raised it another 5 meters. I think it’s hitting structures that people are building on those mountains. Well, just be careful. I’m going to see about making the plane create some serious damage to whatever it hits 🙂 Thanks MrNiceGuy for pointing out the plane was still crashing!

Anti-Offline Protection

Last week I made changes to the offline protection. Now instead of 10 hours it lasts for 5 as each hour it lessens by 20%. Unfortunately I missed the automated message which some were confused by. Thanks to MrNiceGuy to letting me know about it!

NPCs

A few of you have told me that it appears the NPC health is way too high requiring multiple bolty shots to kill them. It turns out health:100 in the settings refers to 100% of their default health. Scientists have 100 health, but murderers – the dumber zombie AI we currently have on our server due to Facepunch bugginess – have 150 health by default. This means 100 is really 150 health.

Let’s try out setting them a little lower. I’ve reduced their health 30% to 70. This should lower their health just around 100 health. Let’s see how it is. Thanks to MrNiceGuy and soundklown for the feedback!

I’ve also made changes to Jason Vorhees:

Health was reduced by 50%

Reduced his inventory

Wood went from 5k to 2.5k

High Quality Metal Ore went from 5k to 250

Stone went from 5k > 1.5k

Metal Ore went from 5k to 500

Removed C4

Removed bones

Jason still has some cool clothing and some valuable Skin Perk tools. Just remember, if you don’t kill him, he’ll track you down and kill you when you least expect it 🙂

Wipe Schedule

Last night was a wipe so get building! 🙂 I hope the weekly schedule makes things a bit more fresh for you all. It certainly will give me the ability to fine tune the server and get an idea of how changes will affect gameplay. I’m hoping for better balance between builder and raider. I’m sure I’ll be making several adjustments over the next couple wipes based on observation and feedback from you all.

Btw, I know I rarely mention Vanillatopia, but that’s just because the Vanilla experience requires few changes. I am planning on adding some new plugins to it, but of course the foundations of it will remain as pure as I can keep them. Modtopia is another story. Please as always keep the feedback coming. I appreciate it Bumfuzzlers!

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